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I used to grieve over bad journalism and then when it died completely, I mourned for years. I was fond of it as an art form, I admired things like journalistic integrity and old-fashioned notions of simply asking “who, what, where, and why?” I remember a time when people took journalism so seriously, reporters would go to jail before they’d reveal their sources. Those were the days! Now I’ll be left trying to tell my grandchildren about the good old days and they won’t even believe me.

So Donald Trump, I’m not even on the Trump bandwagon, but I am on the bandwagon for “let’s cackle hysterically over what passes for journalism these days,” especially anything Trumpian. Even with my low expectations for the media, er, Mediated Reality I mean, I found myself sputtering indignantly. There is bad journalism and then there are the times they just so completely leave the worldly realm, they simply must be orbiting their own little planets.

So the first article is from a  few months back,  US news and World Report, By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press. We must give the man his byline. So, they are fact checking the GOP debate and we come to this which allegedly causes great offense,

TRUMP: “Islam treats women horribly.”

Sounds fairly straight forward to me. I don’t know what to say. There are simply appalling things being done to women in the name of Islam. Somewhere between not being able to drive and being stoned to death, interspersed with a  few acid attacks, we arrive at “horribly.” But oh no, apparently this is false.

 “THE FACTS: No such generalization is supported by the diverse circumstances for women in the Muslim world. The United States has yet to see a woman as president, many years after Muslim women achieved national leadership in other countries, most prominently Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto back in the late 1980s and in the 1990s.”

Oh well than, obviously Trump is lying! Islam is awesome to women. I mean Pakistan has clearly passed the US in their dedication to women’s rights by electing a female Prime Minister.

Wait, Benazir Bhutto, why does that name ring a bell? Oh yeah, she was assassinated in a suicide bombing in 2007! That’s kind of important, don’t you think? I mean if we’re going to use the election of Benazir Bhutto as evidence of women’s rights in Pakistan we should at least mention what happened to her shortly thereafter, shouldn’t we? Nope, not relevant. The rest of this piece is just pure fluff…all about the beauty of women’s rights in the ME, including women’s right to play sports…in full burkas..behind walls.

There just isn’t a face palm big enough for this nonsense.

Next I come to a recent article in the Huffington Post, and while it is probably sacrilege to even call the Huff ‘n Puff “news,” many people read it and it’s been shot through my Facebook feed and Google news as a legitimate form of Mediated Reality. So Huff n Puff declares, “Donald Trump: Americans Who Don’t Report Their Suspicious Neighbors Should Be ‘Brought To Justice’” Naturally this gets my attention, so I slog through some stuff that clearly tells us Trump is planning to jail us all, surely known as ” — a hallmark of some of the most brutal and deadly regimes in history, Nazi Germany and Russia under Stalin.”

Apparently Christina Wilkie, National Political Reporter, got a bit excited there and forgot the part about the velvet glove approach to propaganda and brainwashing. For goodness sake Christina, you don’t just whack people upside the head with a Nazi references, these things require subtlety, seduction. Donald Trump is a Nazi who’s going to send you to the gulag, should at least be preempted with a kiss, some pretty words, something! This is an unpleasant jolt to my system and also completely disconnected from the story at hand. You need to set the stage first, warm your audience up. Then you drive a stake through their heart.

Christina however has gone completely over the edge and can no longer even contain herself. She’s not even trying now, she’s just decided to open it up and fire with both barrels and so she ends with,

“Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.”

Ai yi yi. Unbiased journalistic integrity at it’s finest. If people keep this up, they’ll usher Trump right into office